Hands
by faded harmony
Summary: Because Leo Valdez wasn't good with his words and feelings, but he always managed to make the most beautiful things with his hands. And when he held her fingers and smiled up at her inanimate painted eyes, he wondered why her hands don't feel any different than a living person that he wished to hold. Oneshot.


**Title: **Hands

**Words:** / 9,000

**Disclaimer: **Rick Riordan owns The Heroes of Olympus

**Dedication: **The ANON on tumblr who requested this one shot with the prompt "Angsty Leo." (I HATE YOU ANON jks I love you but WHY!?) Is this angsty enough for you, Anon? (Also dedicated to Zelda just because she is an amazing person and also Roans who talked to me while I was trying to hold myself together while I wrote this. Hope you guys enjoy it! :D)

**Author Note: **This has got to be the longest one shot I have ever written. Also, I'd like to say this one thing about the name I choose *Iba- Although it may stand for Imperial Bronze Andriod (Automaton) the actual meaning of the name means gentle or friendly/and the name is commonly attributed to people with sarcastic or sassy behavior. I actually made up the name just so it would have the acronym IBA (Zelda remember all our acronyms for everything haha) and after looking it up I was just like "Wow that's a coincidence." But yeah. So thanks for reading! Warning: I am not responsible for angsty feels. Agh. Minor Mark of Athena spoilers, just warning you.

* * *

**HANDS **

* * *

He had always been told he was good with his hands.

He had also been told he was useless. And a curse. The seventh wheel. Because no one cared about the things he did. He wasn't made for a people kind of person.

So maybe that was why he got tired of being lonely and made one.

No one needs the repairs anymore. They got what they needed to be fixed and that is all they wanted. After this they'll just throw you out. You are nothing. That's what his mind reminded him with every changing day when he woke to the sun above him.

_You are alone._None of them will ever understand you. Not even your best friend Piper or Jason. They have grown more distant than you thought. You went from being best friends forever to best friends to just friends. And now they don't even talk to you.

He briefly wondered why, as he stormed around his Bunker and yelled curses at the wind. He might have been a hero. Even if he had been a traitor, it would have at least caused more attention than being ignored. Leo was used to being ignored, but by Foster homes and other children. Not his friends.

Hazel might have been more than a friend at one time, but she moved on quickly. Even the gap of the two camps could have at least made an Iris Message to say hello every once in a while. Frank and him had never been close friends, but Leo was so alone even he would have begged for just a scowl or a glare from his least favorite child of war.

And Percy and Annabeth...well, Leo actually didn't try to make conversation with them. They jumped at small noises. They screamed when a shadow blocked out the sun. They clutched each other desperately every time darkness blotted out the light. One time, mistakenly, Percy had grabbed Leo and held onto him when the sun passed through a cloud, thinking he was Annabeth. Leo wrestled to get free from his old friend's grip, but even in his weak state he could have easily overpowered Leo.

He was weak. Forgotten, mistreated, unloved...and most of all, alone.

That was why he decided to end his loneliness. He had dreams of his mother, crying and looking at him with frightened eyes. _"Why did you kill me, mijo? I loved you!_" And his Aunt Rosa, yelling at him for being cursed and killing her sister. "_Cursed child! Get out of here! No one wants you!_" What scared him the most was that his Aunt was right. He was cursed. No one wanted him near him anymore.

It plunged him even further into the dark hole of despair. Most days he didn't even try getting out of his bunker. Then he didn't try building things. Then he didn't try communicating with the world. Then it came to sitting on his bed and staring at the walls. The blank walls he threw things at when he became frustrated, or the walls he banged his head against in an effort to relieve this impatience, and the walls that he threw rubber balls against in an effort to entertain himself.

Across the room sat his old friend. Festus' eyes were dull. He was old, and useless, just like his master. Leo tried to repair him with his scrolls from the genius before him, Archimedes, and even the sphere of power couldn't completely revive his friend. Leo hadn't given up on his friend, but without the familiar creak and squeak from his dragon, he fell even further into the dark hole he liked to call "loneliness."

It came to him out of nowhere. He had been surveying the scrolls of the great mind of Archimedes, when he came across a blueprint for making automatons. There were many of them, some of them like the Wolf Head and the ones Leo counted as evil when the eidolons possessed their mechanical parts. But as Leo filed through them, bored, he came across one for making a girl.

Leo stared at the blueprint. The words of what he had been told before came back to him- _Useless. Seventh Wheel. You will never find a place among your brethren._

He remembered one of the last conversations he had with Mother Earth before she was forced to fade again for the eons. "_You don't have a place, Leo Valdez. You will be forgotten by the world again. Seven is not an even number. One is always left out._"

Leo brushed everything off his desk in a mighty sweep, clattering all his tools and failed experiments onto the floor. He ran his fingers along his own waist, looking for his toolbelt. He patted his sides again. Where had it gone?

After scouring the Bunker, he found it hanging from one of the rafters in another abandoned wing of the cavern. How it got up there, he couldn't recall, but with renewed efforts he climbed up and retrieved it. He went back to his workbench, and stared at the blueprints again.

Buford hobbled over as he started making a base. He started with simple supports so he could hold his creation upright, in a comfortable position. A wide metal circle went around the bottom, and a little elbow grease he managed to attach a platform. He also traced along a wheel, and attached a stand for himself so he could continue building even when he couldn't reach his experiment. He spun it around for good measure. It circled in a loop around his platform. Leo couldn't help but smile at his own ideas.

Next he built a stand. It stood firm and straight like a tree, only about Leo's height, but with additional height from being attached to a platform. Leo sawed through the beam and drilled a large enough hole for it to fit. When he had it in place, his hand heated ever so gently and fused the two metals together.

Leo felt tired all of a sudden. He didn't bother to look at the time, but his legs dragged him to his little cot and he collapsed onto it. He closed his eyes and clapped his hands, and all the lights in the bunker responded and flipped off with a loud CA-THUNK! Leo rolled over and pulled a thin blanket over himself, but he already felt plenty warm inside. He found a purpose again. He found a reason to keep building.

So Leo Valdez was happy.

He spent every waking moment building her. He already had many ideas on what she could look like, but he decided to start from the bottom to the top, because he needed a foundation to support the rest of her limbs and head.

He took scraps from the back, old parts of the Argo II that had been thrown in a heap when the entire interior had collapsed. Granted, it had been pulled apart by an army of Earthborn, but Leo still felt a dull sting when he borrowed parts from the hull and the inside of what used to be the stables. The rest was so bent and broken it was unusable. Just like how he felt most of the time. So, with broken pieces of his old favorite creation, he built a new one from the ground and above.

Her legs were all celestial bronze. The bronze color was so dull, Leo had to continuously polish it with his shirt. He wasn't satisfied until he saw his own reflection, and managed to smile. Then the haunted words of the fortune cookie he had received from the goddess of revenge came back to him. "_You will see yourself reflected, and have reason to despair._"

Leo was in despair. He despaired the moment he passed by something reflective, wondering if the bonds it held by it's mirrored surface would reach out and pull him in. He wondered what a mirror universe would look like. When you looked in a mirror, you saw the backwards version of yourself. But you also saw what you looked like. Would a mirror dimension look the same as he was right now, or would everything be different? Would he be as ignored as he was now, or would he be a hero in the eyes of everyone else?

He developed catoptrophobia, when he looked it up through a Google search engine. The fear of being reflected. The fear of mirrors. He stopped polishing everything until he could see his reflection. He only made them clean enough, and then stopped. He didn't want to see himself. He feared for becoming like Narcissus, who had gazed upon himself long enough to fall in love with himself. Leo was lonely, but he didn't want to be _that_lonely.

He thought of when he had seen Echo despairing for the one she loved. He couldn't bear the sound of echoes through the Bunker anymore. He thought of how she was doomed to never speak for herself, but only resound what she heard, and repeat all the noises others could make but not herself. She was like him, invisible, and doomed to never have the one he loved.

He remembered a while ago he had gotten ahold of some Chinese takeout when he had gotten hungry enough. A fortune cookie waited for him on the top, and he couldn't bear to open it. It sat for days, growing more lonely as the hours passed and remained unopened. When he couldn't bear the suspense, he ripped through the plastic and held the fortune cookie in his fingers, turning it over in his hand as he laid in his cot. He wondered the consequences for opening it.

But he figured his life couldn't get any worse than it was. So he opened it.

"_You will find another, only to be lonelier than before._"

He threw the fortune cookie across the room, where it cracked and splintered on the wall and bounced back to hit the floor. The slip of paper crackled and turned into flame in his hand.

Leo wished he would just be beamed up by some alien race or maybe even death itself. He then scolded himself for feeling that hopeless, because he had a job to do. Build. Keep focused on the task in your hands.

In those times of silence with nothing but his own thoughts and the scraping of materials being molded and bent into shapes. He wondered if in a parallel universe, he would be with his mother. He wondered if she forgave him, and Leo had to stop working for a little bit of time. He felt cold again, just from being alone.

He worked up to the figure's waist at last. He then attached the larger parts. He spent hours beating them into shape with a sledgehammer into the celestial bronze, each hit imagining hitting himself for all the things he had done wrong and cursed the world for.

When the attached the parts around her middle, up to her chest, he realized he was running low on Celestial bronze. Leo cursed and went back to the remains of the Argo, scouring for any bit of bronze.

He found some near the back. He picked up the circular shape, and it triggered another memory inside of him.

_"What in the world are you thinking?" She [Hazel] sounded pretty flustered. _

_"I try not to think," Leo admitted. "It interferes with being nuts. Just concentrate on moving that celestial bronze. Echo, you ready?"_

He thought of Echo and Hazel. Hazel, who already loved someone else, and wasn't sure if she loved Leo too, only because he looked so much like the one she had loved once before. And Echo, who was as cursed as he, to love but never be loved back.

He thought of Reyna. The lone praetor who he had yet to have another civilized conversation with. The one they had was far from what Leo had expected.

_"Are you always this...?" Leo struggled to find the right word._

_"Bitter?" The praetor's dark eyes were boring into his own. "Cruel? Masked?"_

_"I was gonna say something more along the lines of alone, but those sound pretty fair too." _

_She stepped back from him. "Are you too, just as alone, Leo Valdez? I've heard your friends have all found someone, except for you."_

_Leo couldn't meet her eyes. "I...yes."_

_"Maybe we are similar like that," she sounded weary. "But we can not be friends. You have yet to find someone, fire wielder. I am just as cursed as you, because things I can and can't love have already been taken from me."_

_"I destroy everything I touch," Leo told her. "How is that any different?"_

So maybe him and the Roman girl weren't that far off, but that was down a path Leo didn't really feel like chasing down. It was dark and had many twists and unexpected turns, and he saw he would never get far down it anyways. So why try?

He installed a tiny syncopator in the automaton's heart. He encased it in a solid Imperial gold casing so it wouldn't have a meltdown, and locked the inside with a golden key. He closed the plate over her chest, and welded it with his finger until there was nothing but a tiny edged scar on the right side.

The arms were delicate. These he had to make from Imperial gold, borrowed from broken weapons he had taken from Camp Jupiter to repair. He never got around to repairing them, so he used them to build his metal girl.

He put casing around her interior up to her neck, where it was cut off and so many electrical wires running through her body like veins she might have been a real person, if it weren't for the fact oil ran through her veins and she had a mechanical heart. She might have been real, she was real enough for Leo, and he loved her mechanical parts and every part he added to her as the days grew longer.

Her fingers were smooth and connected. Leo made the wiring for those the most complicated, besides her facial expressions. Her fingers were jointed like a normal human's would, and curved so delicately you couldn't see the hinges which held them in place. He only had the wire framing over most of her limbs except her legs, which needed a metal support. Leo knew he would most likely have to cover her entire framing with bronze or gold to finish, but he wanted to get her mostly done and see if he had any metal left first.

Her face took the longest.

Leo sculpted it from burning hot celestial bronze. He molded her nose, so perfect and smooth, and her cheeks (always a bronze color, because mechanics can't blush) rounded and so life-like, even dimples around her mouth, even if she wouldn't be able to smile. He made her chin, and the dents where he would have to put her eyes, and her mouth. He shaped her lips, protruding only a little, in the shape of a small frown becoming a smile.

Leo briefly wondered if the joy he felt was the same joy as Gods, when they first created mankind. Had they felt the utter craftsmanship and care it took to create them? How different was his automaton than himself? Just a few nuts and bolts and living flesh, but he could have easily been a robot.

One day his plans dissolved as quickly as he made them. He had just attached the final parts to her face, her bouncy dark curls of iron all in place and her eyes closed and not alive. He fell into despair. He couldn't make a person, what was he thinking?

In a sudden despairing rage he threw her against the wall, her careful metal framework he had worked for so long on shattering into a million pieces. Festus' eyes seemed to watch him as Leo paced around angrily, feeling like an army of fire ants were crawling through his clothes. Buford hid under a work desk and shook uncontrollably, for fear he would start throwing more things around the room.

Leo slumped into chair by the work desk by where his original designs had started. He pushed the scrolls off his desk and onto the floor. Tucking his hands onto the desk, he put his head down on them and closed his eyes. It was a long time before his mind stopped buzzing with adrenaline when he finally went to sleep, all his thoughts focused on that one moment of sorrow when he threw her metal body against the wall and shattered her into a million pieces.

He dreamed he was dancing with a beautiful girl, but as they danced her dress started to fly apart like burning paper. Her limbs turned to ash and blew away, and as Leo reached out his hand to save her, she mouthed the words _"Why, Leo?_" and exploded in a flurry of ashes and dust before his eyes.

Leo woke up with a start, his hand reaching across the desk as if about to grab an imaginary hand. He turned his head over and adjusted his sore legs from sitting still for too long, staring tiredly at the scrolls on the ground. With a sigh, Leo picked them each up one by one and set them on the desk. Carefully rolling out a new branch of parchment, he set the sketch pencil to the paper and started to draw.

Halfway through, he propped up Archimedes' old sketch of a woman automaton. He questioned why the genius inventor would have wanted a woman robot, but maybe it was because he was as lonely as Leo. Everyone gets lonely, but theirs seemed unbeatable and impossible to fill the empty space.

Leo adjusted the measurements, making his automaton smaller and with more complications. Instead of directly wiring her parts to the head, he would chain them up along her back incase she became unpredictable like Festus and needed to be turned off. It was kind of like a spinal cord that real people had, except she would be running off of literal electricity. Leo could already see the many options he could use on this new automaton since he had modern technology that Archimedes hadn't even considered. He could use magnets that would move like a generator inside her mechanical heart, powering volts of electricity hooked up to a...

When he was done drawing, he had a full automaton to build. He looked back at his old one, and walked over to her, gently picking up her mechanical face.

"_Everything can be reused,_" his mother once told him. Like Festus as his masthead, and Archimedes' designs being used again in the modern world, Leo could reuse her too.

His automaton had broken into lots of parts. Piece by piece he lifted her up and carried what he was able to save back onto his workbench. Her legs were splintered. Her arms were twisted. The middle of her chest had a large crater-sized dent through it. Her once beautiful face was scratched and had multiple dents on the sides and on the top of the head. Leo was filled with undying sorrow for breaking something so innocent and harmless. Even the things he built to love he would break, just because he was cursed.

Now Leo was ready to finish it. He repaired from bottom to top, first restructuring her legs. He removed the heavy metal casings he had originally used for her thighs and calves and placed a lighter framing entirely of wires. He salvaged the metal he could and mixed it into a large pile, only building the wire casing of her body first. He made it light and manageable, adding more flexibility around her knees and ankles just like a real person. It was a kind of mesh casing, spreading further and further up from her legs to her waist to where Leo had to stop from exhaustion and take a night to sleep.

When he awoke, he immediately went back to work. The mesh he created was soft in his hands, and we he tried to crush it with his hands, it was strong enough and tightly webbed so it wouldn't break. Kind of like the webbing Arachne had, Leo mused. He then reminded himself never to compare his design like that in front of Annabeth, who would either slap him or kill him. They would both hurt more than Leo was planning to endure.

He built the wire mesh and case around her chest, and then her arms, and the tiniest most complicated parts were placed in her fingertips. They could flex and had sensors for feeling, and they could even respond to temperature or surface feeling. They could be twiddled and the mesh was so soft, Leo picked up the other hand he was about to attach, and wondered how different it was from a real hand. Were hands real? Was this just some scheme of the gods to show how humanity is no more than just a few parts and thoughts super glued together? Was he, Leo, even real?

_Now I'm crazy_, he thought. _You know you've been alone too long if you start having deep thoughts like that. _Leo tried to remember the last time he had talked to an organic life form in the shape of a human. Was it three Tuesdays ago, or four? Maybe five. He couldn't remember. He had withdrawn into seclusion, and he doubted anyone outside noticed.

Leo came to her neck, and decided against redesigning the entire face, he would just mold it with the mesh and worry about it later. He once again paid careful attention to detail as he folded the layers and created a mesh shape of a human head. The eyes were slightly indented, and the forehead was pronounced around the eyebrows. Leo realized as he added each detail how complicated and diverse every person was. Noses could be rounded, or they could be smoothly curved or sharp and pointy, and some were pig-looking and others just looked awkward. After several attempts, Leo finally picked the head up from his lap and turned it over with his hands, then viewed it from eye level, then upside down under his legs, from the rafters and next to the body itself. Satisfied, he put it around the neck piece and clipped it into place. He sat on his spinny-wheely chair by his work desk and spun it around and pushed it back so he could admire his work.

She was by his mechanical mind, stunning. The head was faced straight forward, and Leo could see all the nerve sensors running up her fingers and her face. This one was different than the last because it was _his own_.

But Leo wasn't done yet. He took all the scrap metal he had peeled off his original automaton and dumped it in a large pot. With his own power, he lit one of the old blacksmith looking forge-things where you heated metal and pushed the pot into the searing flames. When he pulled it out, the pot was almost burning red with heat and if Leo wasn't who he was he might have burned his entire arm off. He pushed the pot back over to his wire creation and looked in his boiling mixture.

The celestial bronze and the imperial gold hadn't gotten along. They were trying to separate each other in the liquid, but the two metals were inanimate and it was just their molecular structure refusing to be one. When they stopped bubbling and steaming, it cooled a little and suddenly it changed.

The metals danced and swirled around each other, the bronze turning lighter and more gold like, and the gold turning darker and more bronze. Leo watched as they fused together, marveling a different kind of alchemy science he had just witnessed.

Slowly he dipped the wire sculpture in the metal broth. It bubbled and fizzed like baking powder being dropped in vinegar, but didn't explode, so Leo took that as a good thing. The wires fissed and started to melt, but the metals clung to the wire and spread an even coat over Leo's sculpture. When he took her out, she was heavy but not too heavy. The color she had been given shone like a lantern in the hazy semi-dark bunker. Her skin was bronze but light, so from far away you might have mistaken her as a normal person. Leo touched the metal. It was soft to the touch, perhaps another effect of mixing Imperial Gold and Celestial Bronze. Two metals that usually were used to kill monsters, but they created the softest more comfortable metal Leo had ever touched.

Leo added her eyes. They were the color of fire, as he placed them in the tiny indents he made. He closed the lids, and worked on her back where he would install her hard drive- her electric powered mechanical heart.

When he was done he closed the lid and fastened it inside the wire and dipped her back in the boiled metals. It sealed over without a single scar or a blemish.

Leo glanced over at some other work decks. Some old half-melted silver was sitting precariously over the edge, and Leo scooped it up and dumped it in his celestial-gold/imperial bronze mixture. He wasn't sure what to do next, and decided one last round of dunking should seal the deal and cover every part of her.

By accident, he slipped his grasp on her. He had been playing with his magnets he was planning to attach her to and start her ticking, but she slipped under the metallic water. Leo dropped the magnets, which sparked inside the liquid. Leo cursed and kicked the pot, because now his sculpture was at the bottom and he would have to drain the entire thing in order to get her out.

Pacing around his forges again, Leo rubbed his chin. Was there a way to get her out of the boiling metal without damaging her? That was when the pot trembled.

Leo froze. Light danced from the inside of the pot. Now he was convinced either something creepy voodoo was going on, or he was lacking too much sleep. It could have been either, which scared him.

The sides of the black brew pot began to crack, and Leo faintly heard the sound of thunder striking from the inside.

It exploded. The liquid zoomed in all directions- and then it froze too. It flew back into a large swirling gold-and-bronze mass, flying above the shattered pottery and spinning faster than your average merry-go-round. Cowering, Leo attempted to hide himself behind a workbench because something really weird was _definitely_going on.

The liquid shone brighter than any sun Leo had ever had his eyes fixed on. It spun and spun and spun and made him dizzy. Then the metal vanished, like someone turning off a light, and a solid metal sculpture stood in front of him.

It extended a hand, her fire glazed eyes sparking with embers that looked upon him with concern. "Master?" It asked, it's voice so gentle and human Leo almost fell backwards. "Are you suffering. Human complications?" There was a pause between every three words, like her breath couldn't last long enough to hold more than two thoughts at a time. But automatons don't breathe.

"I...I..." Leo stammered. "You just-metal-_what?_"

"You brought me. Into the human. World you call. Life," she responded in the same gentle melodic tone Leo was still confused over. "You are human. Are you not?" Leo assumed it was a question, but her tone didn't raise a pitch when you usually inquire something.

Leo didn't know what to say, but when all else failed he made a joke. "I..only half, though."

Her mouth remained immobile, and her eyes didn't blink, but Leo saw the fire in her eyes roar happily. "You are like. Me?" That question didn't sound like a question either, but Leo answered anyways.

"No. I am not mechanical." He said, and softly placed his hand in hers. He was amazed at the soft texture in her hands, even if they were completely coated in a metal substance. Her fingers bent and flexed to receive his, becoming firmer to hoist him up. He saw the way her biceps seemed to bulge as she accepted his weight, and he coudn't help but be struck by awe at her human qualities.

"You are surprised." She spoke again. Leo snapped his eyes onto her face. He noticed something else now, besides having been completely doused in metal, the silver he had thrown in had extended to her scalp and her eyebrows, leaving white-silver hair. Her hair was short and straight, barely coming to her shoulders, but Leo thought it looked pretty that way.

She was clothed too, thank goodness, because Leo didn't want to make things awkward. Silver coverings were wrapped around her chest and waist, a silver blouse and a flowing silver skirt. She was barefoot, and she looked down to sense the coldness of the stone floor. Leo stared.

"It is cold. In here." She said like she was reading off the temperature readings of a chart.

"What is your name?" Leo asked.

"I do not. Have a name." She said, with the same weird spacing in between every third word. "I was created. By you and. Your father granted. Me power with. The sacrifice of. Valuable metals."

"My dad brought you to life?"

"Your father gave. Me a reason. To work."

Leo huffed and glanced around the messy bunker. "Figures. Any other cryptic advice you have from my dad?"

"You are very. Cryptic." she said. "I can not. Read emotions good."

Turning back to her, her amber eyes bored into his own. "I want a. Reason to be. Here. Will you teach. Me so I. Am not alone?" Leo still didn't hear the ring of a question there, she had developed a strange monotone with a pause problem. Leo was sure he could fix that.

Leo managed to smile at the mechanical girl, her fine metal silver hair adjusting as she tilted her head in a pleading attempt with a poker face and sizzling eyes. "I'm sure we can teach each other. I'm kind of lonely too."

She might not have been able to smile, but Leo could see it inside the depths of her fiery eyes. And maybe her vocabulary was only limited, because she was an automaton and couldn't feel, but he could see her silent _thank you thank you oh thank you_and that made Leo very warm inside.

"First thing's first," Leo indicated with his chin to the broken pottery and the rest of the workshop, where things had been blown off the walls from the cyclone caused by the spinning phenomenon that made her. "We gotta clean this mess up first."

"As you wish. Master."

* * *

It turns out automatons clean up a workshop faster than a slightly wobbly easily offended table and a slightly broken demigod. She cleaned with such swiftness and grace for an automaton, but she didn't appear to like water.

"Water is bad." she said. "Water make circuits. Not working."

Leo patted her shoulder, which was easy because they were roughly the same height. _Just how Leo would have wanted his girl to be_. She looked at Leo for a minute, and went back to her methodic swing of sweeping dust and other trash outside the door.

Her silver hair sparkled from the light of the hanging fixtures above them, and her eyes were taking everything inside the room as if smelling a wondrous perfume.

When they cleaned the bunker, Leo sat down next to his cot, prepared to sleep. "What are you. Doing?" She asked in that I-can't-really-ask-questions way.

"Sleeping," Leo murmured tiredly. "I'm just a little...tired."

She tilted her head to the side, if a computer was personified it might have been her. Processing. Simply trying to process what he said. "I do not. Understand."

"I need to take a rest."

"You need rest."

"Yes," Leo confirmed. "Gee, you still don't have a name, do you?"

"I am nameless."

"Don't worry. I'll think of a good one tomorrow." Leo shut his eyes and she sat next to his bedside for the rest of the night, because automatons do not feel tired and never need to rest.

When he awoke she was still in the same position by his cot, her amber eyes watching him expectantly.

"Do all humans. Sleep?" she asked the minute he blinked and tried to wake himself up.

"Yes," Leo said. "It's a necessity. We get our energy from sleeping."

She took his hand, and the metal from her fingers felt cold. "Where do you. Plug your power. Cord?"

Leo laughed. "We don't need power cords."

"Do you use. A battery?"

"Nope," Leo stood up and retracted his hands. "We recharge by getting some good sleep."

"Do all humans. Sleep during the. Day?"

Leo frowned. "No, they usually sleep when it's dark and the sun is gone. I'm just a weird human, don't base anything particularly human off of me."

Leo made his way over to his mini fridge, hearing the tiny rumbles his stomach was making. He remembered one time on the Argo he had been so hungry that he had started complaining to his friends "My tummy is making the rumblies!" Leo thought of that for some reason, and snorted as he went to open the handle to the mini fridge.

Buford, who had been holding onto the fridge that had been sitting on top of him, scuttled away from Leo after he took out a carton of milk and a tiny plastic cereal box. It was Rice Krispies, the chocolate kind Leo used to like when he was little.

Leo poured the rest of the milk into his cereal and took a seat on his swirly chair next to his work desk. Since he had no name for her, he decided to call her Automatona (A for super short) because he was still working on that name. Leo took a spoon of his cereal and put it in his mouth, and A watched him rather interested.

Leo spat out his cereal. "PLAH!" The milk tasted wrong, probably because it was old. Leo made a sour face and dumped the rest of his cereal in the trash, and wiped off his hands.

"Do all-"

"No, we don't eat like that," Leo said. "The food just went bad. So I threw it out."

"You threw it. Out?"

"Yeah. It wasn't good anymore."

"Do you do. That with all. Things that go. Bad?"

"Most of the time." Leo wasn't looking at her.

He was surprised by the noise she made, a kind of empty choking sound. Leo spun around, and saw A was clutching her throat and the corners of her metal face were scrunched up.

"What's wrong?" He asked, rushing over and taking her hands from her neck.

"Do you throw. Out things like. Me?" She asked, and Leo realized she was crying in her automaton way. "Because I am. Broken?"

Leo didn't know what to say, so he held her close. "No, I don't throw everything out." He brought her face up with his hand. "It's okay, I won't throw you out. You are special. And you aren't broken either."

"Then what do. You do with. Things you don't. Throw out?"

"I reuse them," Leo said, feeling oddly like his mother for a minute. Is this what being a parent is like, always grasping for something to reassure your child? He hated seeing her get hurt, and he wondered how it felt for his mother to know her little child would have to leave and fight big monsters some day. He felt a little sick to his stomach, and not from the sour milk. "Everything can be reused."

* * *

Leo found out she could feel things. She had sensors on her hands and feet of course (although she liked to be able to sense things, so she remained barefoot) but she could feel emotions. That by itself was amazing to Leo, and he kept trying to think of the most amazing name for her.

"Jane?" Leo found he was good at suggesting names when working on something, so he decided to repair some of the old cranes around the place and underneath tables and other supported objects.

"I do not. Like that name." She answered.

"Emma?"  
"I do not. Want a human. Name."

"All names are human, we created them."

"The gods made. Humans so does. That mean what. I think it. Does?"

"No," Leo answered, as a tiny splurge of oil splattered onto his face. "Pleh, this tastes worse than that milk."

"I want a. Name that stands. For something." She told him, peering her amber eyes under his table. From upside down, he could see her weak attempt at a smile. She was still working on what a smile was, but Leo thought it was far more of an improvement than a solid straight face all the time.

"How about Hannah?"

He could sense her disgust. "You must think. Of a real. Name."

"Those names _are_real."

"Is your name. Real, Leo?" At least she knew to pause with commas, but that might make all her sentences a little too spaced.

"My name is Leo," Leo hummed under his desk. "I know who I am, therefore I am real."

"But what if. You did not. Know?"

"Then I suppose it would be a dream."

"What is a. Dream?" She _still_didn't point up a question with that tiny raised tone of her voice, but Leo knew she was asking a question.

"We could all be dreams. Just child dreams of someone else. Maybe we don't exist."

"You have strange...thoughts." Leo realized she didn't just pause randomly there, but took a thoughtful pause to show she was considering something. She learned fast about being human, Leo noticed, and he learned things about her too.

"How about C-G-R?"

"Seegeeaarr?" She tried to say. Leo grinned, even though he was under a table.

"Hmm..you're right. I was gonna say it stood for _Celestial Gold Robot, _but I guess you don't like it...how about Iba?"

"Iba." she repeated. "Is that a. Name?"

"It is if you want that to be your name."

"What does it. Mean?"

"Well," Leo turned his wrench around a loose screw he spotted. He saw her kicking her legs back and forth behind the table, and fought not to smile, and then realized he could because no one would see him anyways. "I don't know if it has a meaning, but I think it can stand for _Imperial Bronze Android._I think Iba sounds pretty."

"I am Iba." She said.

Leo rolled himself out from under the table, and smiled at her from the ground. "Hello, Iba. I'm Leo."

* * *

"I do not. Understand."

"Not everything is mathematics and science, Iba." Leo tried to explain. "You can say, it's cold, but that's just because right now we're lacking heat." He ignited his hand with flames. "Is this light?"

"It is fire."

"Fire is light," Leo said. "It's when I take away the darkness and make it shine. Not everything has to make sense in science, Iba. By the nature of science it says you shouldn't even exist. Math doesn't measure how cold or how warm something is. It's how we feel. I feel like science is wrong for saying you don't exist."

"Does it say. I am not. A piece of. Matter?"

"It says you shouldn't be able to feel the things you do," Leo slipped her tiny fingers into his own. "But that's the benefit of being a demigod. Not all science is true, and not everything is magic. See, that's where I get to see both sides. You are scientifically the sweetest thing I have ever met, but to science you don't have emotions and can not feel. But magic says you are animate, and therefore you are capable of emotions. I get a balance, and it's nice to have both."

She stared at him with blank eyes and an unmoved face. When he held her fingers and smiled up at her inanimate painted eyes, he wondered why her hands don't feel any different than a living person that he wished to hold.

His hands were cursed, he thought as he held the both of theirs up for comparison. His were rough and callused, and hers were gold and dainty. He could build anything with his hands, yet he could never be perfect with them.

* * *

Leo spread out his legs, trying to get comfortable underneath the blanket of stars in the dark sky above them. Iba was leaning back, her eyes closed, soaking in the depth of the sky.

"Do you like the view?" Leo asked.

"It is...lonely." She was better at her speech now, and Leo had taught her simple things about being human; raising one's tone after the end of a question, and the appropriate pause between words. However she was never able to stop taking a pause between every three words, and Leo didn't know why. Occasionally if she was agitated, she slipped into her old habit, but she usually was able to sound like how a normal person talked. "Up there. It seems endless. The stars are. Like beacons. They shine forever. But we are. Mortal and we. Will fade."

Leo kissed her metal hand. "Everything is mortal, because nothing lasts forever. I won't last forever, and neither will those stars. We all burn out someday."

She looked agitated now. "I do not. Want you to. Burn out. Are you a. Candle?"

Leo laughed, picking up his index finger and alighting it. "I am just the repair boy, I'm the one who fixes repairs. I don't worry about burning out because I never had a shot anyways. It's okay, Iba, because I am mortal and fading doesn't worry me. It's natural."

"Not all things. Are natural."

"How so? I'm pretty sure everything on this earth is natural."

"It is unnatural. That you and. I are so. Very alone in. This world of. Stars. Are all stars. This lonely?"

"That depends," Leo stared up as he watched the other stars, and their suns inside their galaxies and inside other universes. "Some stars are lonely," he looked at a star far up to the south where it sat further from the rest of it's other nearby stars. "But in the dark they shine brighter just because there's no one else to share the light."

"But would not. Two stars make. It brighter?"

"Maybe," Leo said. "If they weren't so lonely."

* * *

When the music in the radio started up, she was scared. She hid behind Leo, who was left to marvel once again how something by science told not to have feelings could touch and react like a human and _feel _the same as people.

Leo grinned as it scrolled through music. From people like Taylor Swift, to Maroon 5, and P!nk, and even One Direction and the Beatles. He tapped his foot against the floor with the beat.

Iba stared between the radio waves of that and his foot. "Why are you. Doing that?"

"I am feeling the music."

Iba stretched her hand out in the direction of the noise. "I thought you. Said we can. Not feel sound."

"I'm not worrying about the actual sound, it's how it sounds in my head."

Iba tilted her head in that computer-is-processing-way. "How does it. Sound in your. Head?"

"It sounds beautiful." He took her head and led her to the middle of the room, and rocked her back and forth. "And so are you."

She frowned. "Are you being. Cheeky with me. Leo Valdez?"

"I am _always_ cheeky, dear." She smiled finally, tiny dimples appearing in her shining face. Leo held her close, her listening to the rhythmic pounding of his heart and him listening to the empty facades of lightning that struck in her own.

* * *

"All things are. Mortal." She said. Her amber eyes seemed quite dull now.

Leo stroked her metallic silver hair. He wondered if she ever came in contact with a giant magnet in her life, if she would be stuck to it for eternity. Then he thought how he had put two opposite pole magnets inside for her heart, so it would repel other metals. Plus the nature of Imperial Gold and Celestial Bronze wasn't especially conducted and picked up by magnets. But she was both, which made her special.

"I am mortal." She continued. "You are mortal. You will leave. Me soon. You will be. Thrown out."

Leo kept her hand in his. "Yes," he said in a croaking voice. "I am sorry for leaving you alone."

Iba nuzzled her head in his shoulder, her eyes crinkling in the way she would when she was about to cry. "You are never alone," she struggled not to make a pause in the third word. Leo smiled back at her, the age lines in his face wrinkling. Iba was automaton and never aged, her skin as smooth and metallic as it was when he first made her.

"I will miss. You." She said.

"I will too." Leo said. "I know you are not capable of feelings but..."

"When my magnets. Race and I. Feel like I. Am dizzy and. Can not help. But feel warm. Around you." Iba hugged him closer. "I have watched. You grow old. And I wish. Too that I. May leave with. You. Maybe that is. What makes me. Different than humans. You have a. Soul while I. Do not leave. This earth. I will never. See you again." Her eyes shut and crinkled some more.

Leo tutted. "Nonsense. Everything of this earth always returns. I will grow old and wither, and someday will be nothing but ashes. And those ashes make other things, like plants and trees. It's a cycle, you see. So is love, because love doesn't die when the other does. Love is simply existent, and it is never fading. If anything, love is the most important science. It is matter, because it has gravity in our world and nature does not flow without love. Love made the world, and the world keeps the love and it is always there. The amount of love never changes, because it will exist forever. Whoever made us-or decided they wanted to- must have loved us to put so much care into every living thing here." Leo took a little swipe at her nose and raised her chin. "So no matter where each of us goes, love stays the same. You may be all mechanics, but I love every part of you and you love me, right?"

Iba wiped her dry eyes. "I don't want. To see you. Die." She choked.

Leo took a shuddering breath. "Think of it as simply going to sleep. I'll slip away, and for a while, you'll be in the night and you'll just have to wait for the daylight to come back."

"With age you. Have become wiser." Iba remarked. "As most humans. Do."

"I am human in every way," Leo said. "And you feel as humans do, does that not make you human?"

"I am not. Of the same. Parts."

"Parts? No person looks the same. No one should be divided by looks because that is physical and can't be changed. If we were to divide the world by the color of their eyes, or the number of cells in their body, no one would be the exact same. We're individual that way."

Leo took a deep breath again. "The point is, you are as human to me as any other person I've known in my lonely life."

She took his hands and covered them with her own. "Have I made. Your life less. Lonely?"

"You gave me a person I could love. I was never lonely with you."

* * *

She buried him right outside of the bunker.

* * *

She waited.

* * *

Years passed, and her eyes grew dimmer with every year, and dustier as she could not clean them from the inside. They grew to the expression he would have called-tired-but from memory. She remembered everything about him, the way he looked and how he talked and when he smiled...and she wondered if he remembered her.

* * *

"I see something!"

"You're blind. It's just a rock."

"Aida, I'm _serious_. Look at this! I can totally sense there is a-"

The bunker walls groaned as the child balanced his hand over it, and the doors slid open with loud frustrating sounds.

"Uh. Aida."

"Greene, what did you do this time-" Her eyes widened as she saw what was inside. "We have to find Chiron."

He pushed her aside. "Are you kidding me? This place is amazing!"

"Greene-"

"Don't call me that. I'm going inside."

"Celo don't you dare!"

"I'm stepping," he said and took a big step into the entrance. "Gee, how could we have missed this? I guess it was that giant oak tree right outside the entrance."

"Celo we should get back..."

"Now wait-" the old lights flickered on, and they both shrieked in surprise. "Light!"

She fumbled with her sword. "Let's get out of here!"

"It's just a light." He stumbled through other things, and pulled off a canvas on a work table. He yelped as a giant dragon-head stared down at him with ruby red eyes. "AH! Dragon! Kill it!"

She stepped in. "It's an automaton, idiot. Let's get out of here!"

"Just wait. I want to explore a little more..."

He pushed past things. Paper? He frowned. There was some designs...he went to the bottom, the oldest. _1861._

"Holy Zeus! This stuff is over four hundred years old!"

"Another reason why we shouldn't touch it!"

"Come on, have a look around." Celo scrolled through more designs. There was one of a giant ship, with the top labeled "_THE ARGO II_" and a signature under it. Aida stumbled up to find him, and saw what he was looking at and squinted to read the signature. "_Leo Valdez_? That sounds familiar."

"Wasn't he a hero or something?"

"I remember now," Aida said. "He was one of the seven heroes of the Giant War prophecy. Apparently after the war he went a little crazy and vanished into the woods."

Celo squeaked. "Are you telling me his ghost is haunting this cave?"

Aida took a tiny thing from inside her pocket and shone a flashlight no bigger than a pin that was rather bright around the walls. "Bunker 9," she murmured.

"Aida, we should leave."

"Oh come on, I was just telling you to leave and now you want to leave when it gets interesting. You're a baby."

Celo ignored her, frozen in place while Aida pushed through some stuff. She went into a corner, and walked into a box.

"Oof," she said and shone her mini pocket light up to it. She dropped the light, which flickered off.

"Aida!"

"Celo," she whispered. "You gotta see this."

"It's too dark!"

She picked up the mini light again and shone it on the box. Engraved in silver on the top said;

_IBA_  
_IMPERIAL BRONZE AUTOMATON_  
_"No matter where each of us goes, love stays the same."_

"Uh, Celo?" she whispered, horrified.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," Celo said frantically. The door creaked open.

Aida braced herself to see a dead body rotting away, but instead a fully intact girl sat inside, her eyes closed and her arms wrapped to her shoulders like a mummy.

Celo racked his brain for the old way to activate automatons. "Uh, Imperi- Iba, command sequence Daedelus twenty three. Bootup."

The automaton didn't move.

"This wasn't made by Daedelus, it looks different," Aida said. "Uh, Iba, will you please wake up?"

The automaton whirred to life, it's amber eyes flickering and shining in the dark like two giant torch lights. The two scurried and backed away, while the limbs began to move and dusted spiderwebs off it's limbs.

"I am Iba," it said. "Who are you?"

"I'm Aida," she said. "This is Celo. We were just exploring the woods and we found this bunker and-"

"Have you seen. Leo?"

"Leo uh..." Celo scratched his head. "As in Leo Valdez?"

"What year is. This?" She asked, her fire-flickering eyes opening wider and panicked.

"Uh, 2272," Aida said. "Why do you need to know?"

The automaton flicked it's hair, upset. "I must find. Him!"

"Why are you. Talking like this." Celo tried to mock the robot, but Aida slapped his arm. "Stop that!"

Iba rushed outside, gasping as she saw the giant oak by the door. The two other legacy demigods followed her, seeing as she ran and embraced the tree.

"A crazy malfunctioning automaton," Celo grumbled. "Just what we need."

"Shhhh," Aida hissed. "Be quiet!"

"Leo," Iba murmured into the bark. "I am sorry. I have been. Waiting for the. Daylight for too. Long. Is your love. Still here? I have never. Left and neither. Have you, It. Is still here. Isn't it?"

"Are you feeling okay?" Aida asked gently. Iba looked at her with glazed eyes. "Yes, I am. Fine."

She knelt down to the bottom of the tree, where she knew Leo had been buried many years earlier.

"You were right. Leo. You and I. Were lonely and. Maybe there is. Human in us. All. After all," she began to smile as she knew her backup drive was running out. "It was your human hands that made me."

Her amber eyes that he had carved so carefully with his gentle hands dimmed, and she smiled because she knew sleep, sleep was coming, just like it had come for him. She wondered what it felt like to fall into the hands of darkness, like he had, so bravely just for her; and she felt her mechanical parts fall apart and embraced the darkness like he, with their hands reached out because they were never lonely.

* * *

~ Fin ~


End file.
